Usa, persi 159 mila posti di lavoro. È il peggior dato dal 2003

[rossana <rossana at comodinoposta.org>]

Il settore dei servizi ha perso 82.000 dipendenti, la maggiore flessione 
in 5 anni e il solo settore delle vendite al dettaglio, il vero motore 
dell'economia americana, ha perso 40.000 addetti. i tratta della decima 
flessione consecutiva per questo comparto e le perdite in settembre si 
sono concentrate soprattutto nel settore delle auto e in quello dei 
grandi magazzini. In difficoltà anche le aziende manifatturiere, che 
hanno perso 51.000 lavoratori, e quelle delle costruzioni, che hanno 
dovuto lasciare a casa 31.000 persone.
http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Finanza%20e%20Mercati/2008/10/Usa-disoccupazione-salari.shtml?uuid=b855255a-914d-11dd-89af-bfeff0c5b928&DocRulesView=Libero

In un articolo Jerry White, Socialist Equality Party candidate for US 
president (di seguito l'articolo), solidarizza con i lavoratori della 
Boeing e avverte che nei prossimi mesi, sotto Obama o McCain, saranno 
milioni i lavoratori che dovranno affrontare il problema di dover pagare 
il salvataggio delle banche di Wall Street, frutto della ripartizione 
del capitalismo americano.
Non devono essere i lavoratori a pagare la crisi provocata dalle èlite 
societarie e finanziarie. (La rendita finanziaria finchè va crea 
ricchezza poi crolla).
(In Italia i sindacati confederali hanno ancora una volta fatto pagare 
ai lavoratori e a tutti noi il salvataggio di Alitalia).
I 700 miliardi approvati dalla Camera in USA sono il più grande furto di 
beni pubblici avvenuta negli USA. Non un centesimo dato al problema 
della casa, non un centesimo dato per i posti di lavoro persi, non un 
centesimo a fronte dei debiti accumulati dalle famiglie.

Questa operazione porterà ad una ulteriore monopolizzazione del potere 
economico nelle mani delle banche più potenti e porterà ad una ulteriore 
frenesia speculativa da parte della èlite finanziaria.
Questa catastrofe è frutto di un processo durato decenni che ha 
distrutto la base industriale e mangiato milioni di posti di lavoro, 
abbassato i salari per liberare capitali in mano alle speculazioni di 
parassiti.

La lotta dei lavoratori Boeing sconfinerà oltre gli USA perchè la lora 
lotta per il salario e la delocalizzazione è la lotta di tutti i 
lavoratori. La crisi economica è mondiale, vedere Airbus e altre 
compagnie aerospaziali. Boeing è alle prese contro la vittoria di una 
grossa commessa affidata dal Governo al gruppo Northrop Grumman e al suo 
partner europeo EADS.
Obama ha appoggiato la campagna nazionalista di Boeing, ma cosa accadrà 
ai lavoratori EADS e Northrop Grumman? In realtà i lavoratori non si 
devono illudere con questo nazionalismo.
(Le grandi ristrutturazioni delle multinazionali di guerra hanno 
provocato non solo la creazioni di forti monopoli ma anche il 
decentramento produttivo, l'esternalizzazione dei servizi e della 
componentistica alle piccole e medie imprese e società finanziarie, 
hanno creato quella che molti chiamano la privatizzazione della guerra).

I sindacati nazionalisti e la loro alleanza con il Partito Democratico 
hanno tradito i lavoratori. Non ci può essere alleanza con un Partito 
che si allea con le grandi corporazioni. Gli interessi non sono gli stessi.
Bisogna dare una alternativa alla guerra e agli interessi della grande 
impresa. Bisogna volgere il denaro pubblico alla costruzione di beni 
pubblici.

Jerry White dice che le istituzioni finanziarie e le industrie di base, 
compresa la Boeing, dovrebbero essere poste sotto la proprietà pubblica 
e il controllo democratico dei lavoratori, senza indennizzo ai 
proprietari, proteggendo anche le attività delle piccole imprese ed i 
piccoli investitori. Invoca la costruzione di un nuovo partito.


Statement by Jerry White, Socialist Equality Party candidate for US 
president
4 October 2008

As the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for US president, I want to 
express my solidarity with the 27,000 Boeing workers on strike for a 
month to defend their jobs and living standards against the giant 
aerospace company.

In the coming months, tens of millions of workers will face similar 
struggles as corporate America and the government—whether led by a 
President Obama or President McCain—try to force working people to pay 
for the bailout of the Wall Street banks and breakdown of American 
capitalism.

The Socialist Equality Party encourages every form of mass resistance to 
these attacks. The working class is not responsible for the economic 
crisis and must not pay for it. I call for uniting every section of the 
working class in a common struggle aimed at a fundamental reorganization 
of economic and political life to meet the needs of working people, not 
the corporate and financial elite.

The $700 billion bailout, signed by President Bush yesterday, amounts to 
the greatest theft of public assets in history. There will not be a 
penny for millions facing home foreclosures, the loss of their jobs and 
a crushing level of family debts. Not one of the speculators and banking 
executives responsible for the worst financial crisis since the Great 
Depression will be held accountable. On the contrary, they will walk 
away with billions as taxpayers are forced to buy—at premium 
prices—their virtually worthless assets.

The passage of this reactionary legislation—which will place 
unparalleled power in the hands of the treasury secretary, an unelected 
official and former CEO of Goldman Sachs—was a mockery of democracy.

The Democratic congressional leadership conspired with the Bush 
administration to ram it through before the election, effectively 
disenfranchising voters and making sure the massive popular opposition 
to the bailout could find no expression. Obama joined McCain in 
promoting the bailout by claiming the massive transfer of wealth into 
the hands of the rich would turn the economy around and improve 
conditions for ordinary working people.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The bailout will bankrupt the 
government and lead to a massive attack on social programs, including 
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Moreover, it will lead to a 
further monopolization of economic power in the hands of the most 
powerful banks and set the stage for the next speculative frenzy by the 
financial elite.

The crisis has exploded all the myths about the “free market” and the 
argument that hedge fund managers and corporate executives deserve 
multimillion-dollar packages because they are the “risk-takers” and 
“innovators.” In fact, this catastrophe is the culmination of a 
decades-long process, in which the ruling elite has systematically 
destroyed the industrial base of the country and shipped millions of 
jobs to low-wage regions in order to free up capital for the most 
parasitical forms of speculation.

While 5 million manufacturing jobs were destroyed and workers saw their 
wages and living standards stagnate, the wealthiest 1 percent of the 
population gorged itself in fabulous riches, in most cases, not by 
producing anything of value but by pocketing the already available 
wealth of others.

Boeing’s attack on its workers is part and parcel of this same process. 
CEO Jim McNerney recently told the Chief Executives’ Club of Boston that 
the company’s outsourcing strategy was a “management rights” issue. 
Indeed, under capitalism, the corporate owners have dictatorial control 
over economic decision-making, including the power to replace workers 
with cheaper labor in order to boost returns for big investors and top 
executives.

By taking a stand to defend their jobs and living standards, Boeing 
workers have been thrust into a conflict not only with corporate 
management but the entire economic and political system in the US and 
internationally, which subordinates the needs of the working class to 
the profits of the super-rich.

The only way workers can secure their rights—to decent-paying and secure 
jobs, healthcare, housing and education for their families—is to build a 
mass political movement that aims to take economic and political power 
in their own hands and reorganize economic life to meet the needs of 
society.

This struggle traverses all national boundaries. The economic crisis is 
rapidly spreading throughout the world economy, as are the demands for 
job-cutting and wage concessions. In France, Airbus workers are facing a 
struggle against the destruction of 10,000 jobs. This underscores the 
need for American and European workers to unite in a common struggle 
against the multinational aerospace companies.

For months, however, the International Association of Machinists (IAM) 
campaigned, along with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama 
and other politicians closely aligned with Boeing, to overturn a US Air 
Force decision to award a refueling tanker contract to Boeing’s 
competitor, Northrop Grumman, and its European partner EADS, the parent 
company of Airbus. The nationalist campaign was used to promote 
illusions that Boeing workers had the same interests as the corporate 
owners and to drive a wedge between US and European aerospace workers.

The past three decades of betrayed working class struggles have 
demonstrated the bankruptcy of the unions’ nationalist and 
pro-capitalist program, and their alliance with the Democratic Party. It 
is not possible to fight for the interests of the working class if 
workers are tied to a political party that, no less than the 
Republicans, defends the interests of corporate America and Wall Street.

I am running in the presidential elections to provide a socialist 
alternative to the twin parties of big business and war. I oppose the 
Wall Street bailout and call for hundreds of billions of dollars to be 
poured into the rebuilding of basic industries, the cities and the 
country’s infrastructure.

The ill-gotten gains of the corporate executives and speculators should 
be confiscated and used to protect distressed homeowners and end all 
foreclosures and evictions. The books of the financial institutions 
should be opened for public examination and those responsible for the 
systematic looting of the people held criminally responsible.

The breakdown of the “free market” demonstrates the burning necessity 
for public intervention and planning. But this must be done by the 
working class, for the working class, not by big business politicians on 
behalf of the wealthy.

The financial institutions and basic industries, including Boeing, 
should be placed under public ownership and the democratic control of 
working people, without compensation to the owners, while protecting the 
assets of small business people and small investors.

To fight for this program, the working class needs to break with the 
Democrats and Republicans and build its own political party—based on a 
socialist and internationalist strategy—to fight to establish a workers’ 
government and genuine democracy.

This is why my vice-presidential candidate Bill Van Auken and I are 
running in the elections. We urge Boeing workers to support our election 
campaign, read our program and make the decision to join and build the 
Socialist Equality Party as the new revolutionary leadership of the 
working class.